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Homeschooling Young Children? Here Are 5 Key Benefits to Adding a Good Art Program

Homeschooling your children? I assume this means you want the best for your kids. An opportunity to give your children a rich multi sensory, personalized type of education ……… Is art included in your curriculum?

If you want the best type of education for your children then ART must be included in your day to day curricular activities

When I say good art I am not talking about the standard traditional arts and crafts that is done in so many preschool and kindergarten classes all over the world. That may be something you do with your kids on a spur of the moment thought when a Holiday is coming up, or you need to make something for Grandma.

But that's not what I'm talking about.

Nope, you left that. You left that along with the traditional world of education because you wanted something better for your kids, something that they cant get in most traditional classes with upwards of 20 kids …..

You probably spend quite a bit of time looking for curriculum on line for your homeschooling curriculum and that's great because you get to choose what and how your kids will be learning.

You do not even realize how necessary and valuable it is for your kids to make sure that there is a solid art program being integrated with the rest of your homeschooling curriculum.

Many parents have some kind of vague ideas about why we give our kids art and some of its benefits.

Oftentimes traditional preschool teachers have just as vague ideas and below are some of the reasons I've heard from some traditional educators, preschool teachers as to why they give their students arts and crafts

They need the children to remember their lessons and figure that an art project will help them do that

They want them to learn to follow directions so they give them step by step directions on how to follow cookie cutter art projects

They need to fill up time in the day, so what better way than an art project

They claim that this is what the Mothers want

So tell me Moms, you are some of the mothers they are talking about (well maybe you're not actually really not since your kids are being schooled) but is this really what you want?

Do you want your kids to follow cookie cutter instructions that turn them into little robots for them to make projects that look exactly like everyone elses?

No! I did not think so.

But I do think that you may not know any alternatives and in working so hard trying to put together some good homeschooling curriculum for your children sometimes art gets lost in the shuffle and that's too bad.

That's too bad because art gives adds such depth to any curriculum that it would be a crying shame when you have the opportunity at home to give such great activities to have your children lose out on these experiences.

Art is not only fun, it's lifesaving and life building and I would like to share with you 5 reasons for you to include really good art into your homeschooling curriculum

Art helps build physical coordination. Art is good for both gross motor coordination and fine motor coordination. Gross motor coordination, the development of large muscle is not only helped by things like ball playing and beam balancing but young children also use their arms during art with wide sweeping movements ans they paint and draw that help build those large muscle. Of course fine motor coordination is better understood as benefit ted from art .. Cutting, gluing, painting, drawing. Your child's small fingers are developing each time they use these art tools

Emotional development – There is no question that art can help a child through many difficult emotional experiences. If a child is jealous of a new baby sibling, she or he can pound on some clay and color furiously instead of pounding on the baby herself. Children also end to use art to work through issues that bother them such as a death in the family, a fire or other disturbing event. (I once taught little girl who had a fire in her home and for weeks that's all she talked and drew and painted about until she calmed down.)

Intellectual development (often known as cognitive development). Children learn to make sense of their world as they use art to count, classify, sort, make their own decisions and learn to follow directions without doing cookie cutter art.

Creativity … Of course children's creativity takes a flying leap if they are allowed to do art that allows them to create at their own level, which allows them to be creative in more ways than one

Integrating curriculum And last but not least art in a home school curriculum can help integrate the curriculum and help them learn. Children learn best through their senses and the more art is integrated with the homeschooling curriculum the more their learning will stay with them.